A Request for Help with a School Project

[ljubljana]

Hello,

I am a (going into) second year engineering student. I am taking ENGR 240 (technical writing) this summer and I need help with a project. I am part of a group of three researching the plausibility and desired features of a light-weight GPU stress testing program. My job within the group is to contact the target audience of the program, to determine what people would want from it. I am looking for any feedback- what you want, what you don't, things you think might be a to much work/code to be worth it.


Some samples of the kind of things we'd like to know about-

-Would you like it to display something cool when running (a good example would be 3dMark's battle scene), or would you prefer it to be lighter weight? Displaying a scene will increase the size of the program significantly, so we'd like to know if that is considered important.

-should it include monitoring (temperature, framerate)? Again, adding features increases the size, which we are trying to minimize.

-Would you like it to have built in overclocking tools?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Thanks for your time. If you want, we can post the final result, although it is going to be a 20 page report.
-Graham

 

[Extelleron]

-3D Mark (at least the older ones IMO, newer ones aren't so exciting) is a bit more exciting than running a benchmark that just runs in the background with no visual display and then cranks out a number. An elaborate visual display is not entirely necessary IMO but I'd rather have it than not have it.

-Framerate should definitely be monitored, particularly if you are going to have a visual display. Temperature is not really important.

-A built in overclocking tool is not important at all IMO. I have Rivatuner for that, and I don't need another program for overclocking. It would be a waste of resources because I wouldn't really use it.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

framerate yes, maybe temperature (just one number please) and sure, pretty effects are great. No OCing needed. Make it pretty stressful, ATiTool sometimes misses things.

 

[sgrinavi]

It would be nice to have a counter that aproximated time to complete

Maybe keep a SIMPLE database of 'scores' with basic parameters

 

[IcePickFreak]

Something simple for a display like say ATItool would be fine. When stress testing, I'm not too concerned on what it looks like; I'm more concerned that it is in fact stressing my GPU. Temp and frame rate display would be nice, although I think of the two the frame rate counter would be more useful as most people that are going to be stressing their GPU are already using something to monitor temps.

I say stick to the basics, if you're setting out to create a GPU stressing tool, make it just that. Seems there are too many apps that try to be an all-in-one package. In reality people into this type of stuff are going to want to piece together different apps that they prefer so having an app that is strictly for stress testing it will be seen as just that. It also allows you to focus a lot more on the core purpose of the program. There is some truth the the saying "jack-of-all-trades, master of none"

 

[Jeff7181]

Ideally I'd like to see something with produces a number that's useful. For example, 13,000 3DMarks doesn't translate to how a video card will perform in Oblivion, Cyrsis, World of Warcraft or Age of Conan.
Here's an idea... create an application that tests different parts of the video card. Something that's memory bandwidth intensive... something that's memory latency intensive... and something that's all about number crunching. That would be something useful that could eventually turn into a DC project that uses a modern GPU's number crunching ability to do something productive.

Oh, by the way. This "benchmark" shouldn't take more than 3 minutes or so... any longer than that and it would get very annoying waiting for it to finish if there was no pretty pictures to help pass the time.

 

[SickBeast]

A simple test that would show how a GPU scales under different loads would be great.

For example, have it give a score for 3 different resolutions, 3 different texture settings, and 3 different AA settings (plus include the 3 features that you mentionned).

Another cool feature might be to have the program underclock the CPU to see how much the framerate takes a hit.

I also agree with Jeff's post above. :beer:

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
A simple test that would show how a GPU scales under different loads would be great.

For example, have it give a score for 3 different resolutions, 3 different texture settings, and 3 different AA settings (plus include the 3 features that you mentionned).

I was going to say the same thing. I think that would be a very useful feature, especially for someone like me still playing on a CRT where I can change the resolution at will to maximize performance vs. playability.

The cutscenes are nice, but once you've seen them once or twice there isn't much point. I don't tend to sit in front of my computer when I run a benchmark anymore. I also think it should isolate the graphics card as much as possible from the rest of the system. As someone else pointed out, 3DMark rolls the CPU score into the total, which can throw GPU to GPU comparisons off. (Or at least make them less straightforward, since you have to tease out the GPU scores from the total.)

Temp monitoring isn't really necessary in my opinion since there are other tools out there, but it wouldn't hurt. If there can be some kind of artifact detection like in ATiTool that would be great. If you don't include a temp monitor, make sure it can be run in a windowed mode. In fact, I would put running in windowed mode as a strong preference. A lot of people like to have stress test windows open against monitoring programs, or be able to take a screenshot of several monitoring programs at the same time, etc.

 

[ljubljana]

*I'm posting the same response to all of the forums that this was posted to, so I will be bringing up points not discussed in this particular thread. Also, sorry if I don't mention your idea. There are so many being offered that I cant address all of them*

I'd like to start by saying thanks to everyone. I really wasn't expected this much help.


Most are requesting a simple looking interface, with clear access to all available functions. Graphs of available information should be an option, with the ability to save for later comparison. Temperature readings, with an option to cancel the test if a maximum is exceeded, should be displayed. Most would rather use RivaTuner then a built in overclocking tool. Some want a benchmark, but I think that is too far off the original project and would probably involve too much extra code to be worth it. A couple have mentioned the option of different workloads, with options of what to test, which seems very useful to me.

Few want anything complex displayed, but MTX from xbitlabs.com brought up an interesting point that in displaying something, the testing is possibly limited due to "performance issues or simply due to filling up some of the graphics memory with non-test data". Displaying a framerate depends on this, so that is still up in the air.

There is some interest in cross-platform compatibility. This would require the use of OpenGL. It was mentioned that DirectX10 would be the simplest to implement. Is OpenGL complicated enough to make it a poor choice?

Thanks again. It looks like I'm going to have to look for some more work in the project, since my part is turning out to be a lot easier then I thought.

 

[adlep]

Is there any chance for the power use monitoring?
For a benchmark program that feature should be easy to implement. Also it is a cross-platform compatible benchmark and a good indicator of the overall engineering effort.

 

[Foxery]

I'd suggest a simple display; something to make me believe the program is doing something, but not waste your time programming something complex that I'll get tired of seeing. ATITool's "fuzzy cube" is a nice example of this. Hell, for that matter, you could just show me something pretty like a WinAmp audio visualisation pattern and do unrelated calculations in the background - so long as I know the program hasn't crashed.

A temperature reading is a must for a stress tool. I have to know how much / how effectively you're stressing the GPU, as well as if it's in danger.

DX10 vs. OpenGL: If you can do it with OpenGL, that would be ideal. Not everyone can use DX10 since it requires Windows Vista. DX9 might not be stressful enough for future generations of cards, though I'm not sure if OpenGL cures this caveat, anyway.

I'll also second the suggestion to have multiple types of stress testing. e.g. some way to determine whether the GPU or the VRAM is at fault. It's not at all apparent what ATITool actually does when it runs.

adlep: I don't think current hardware provides any way to determine power usage, if you mean in terms of watts/amps/etc. RivaTuner, however, displays GPU usage on a graph, in the style of Windows Task Manger.